Undersong
Artist: Simone Dinnerstein
Release Date: January 21, 2022
Label: Orange Mountain Music
Undersong is the third album I recorded during the pandemic. It seems odd to write that, since I did not feel creative or energetic for much of it. Looking back, though, this has been a period of exploration and transformation.
All of the music on this album consists of musical forms that have a refrain. Glass, Schumann, Couperin and Satie constantly revisit the same material in these pieces, worrying at it, shifting it to different harmonies and into different rhythmic shapes. Working with this music in the fall of 2020 was a constant reminder that in my afternoon walk in Green-wood Cemetery, I was quite literally treading a familiar path every day, a path that nonetheless had changed almost imperceptibly every time I left the house.
Undersong is an archaic term for a song with a refrain, and to me it also suggests a hidden text. Glass, Schumann, Couperin and Satie all seem to be attempting to find what they want to say through repetition, as though their constant change and recycling will focus the ear and the mind. This is music to get lost in.